Customer Reviews

The Middle East (Middle East (Congressional Quarterly Paperback))

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My criticism of this text centers on its lack of focus on domstic politics and its obvious bias. The chapter on Turkey is fine. However, chapters on Jordan, Israel and the PA do not focus sufficiently on domestic politics or political systems. Students cannot understand the problematic construction of the Israeli political system from this chapter. It barely discusses this parties. Worse, the chapter on Jordan spends very little time on Hussein's political liberalization. The chapter on the PA gives little credit to the democratic institutions, spends little time on elections, and does not mention the free press. By spending insufficient time examining domestic politics (esp in Arab states), it gives short shrift to these openings. It just contributes to students perceptions of the ME as a strictly authoritarian region.

Chapters on Jordan, Israel and the PA revolve around the Arab-Israeli conflict. This is quite problematic in the case of Jordan where this clearly comes at the expense of analysis of domestic politics. Moreover, those 3 chapters have many factual and statistical errors. It seems the authors of these chapters have an agenda of portraying Israel unfavorably and are using this book to do so.